Feelings
by wordybirdy
Summary: Holmes uses his violin to express his feelings.  Watson ducks for cover.


It was neither the fierce heat from the sun nor the overly-snug fit of my new bowler hat that was the cause of my present discomfort. Nor was it the dawdling construction work upon the tall corner building of Baker Street, with its hammering from dawn until dusk upon some grit-spewing project or other. For the noise that yet pained me was shrill, insistent and perturbing in a way that had me very much wishing it to cease. It had been a bee in my ear for the past seven days, nonetheless. As I ascended the stairs to our sitting-room I could hear it now, still, having apparently not taken breath since my departure an hour ago. I shook my head, closed my eyes, and pushed open the door.

Holmes was standing close to the window, a music stand upright before him with a mad sheaf of papers trapped upon it. With his left hand he clasped his treasured violin, tucked as it was under his chin; while with his right he brandished his bow as a man with the most deadly purpose. The strings shrieked in fear. Holmes's expression was black-browed and fierce. He looked up as I entered, and the recital took pause.

"Watson," said he, a little breathless, "I am glad you have returned. Would you care to listen to these few bars?" He pointed with his bow at the music stand. "They were composed directly after you left, and I am eager for a fresh ear."

I managed to conceal my dismay very well.

"Is it _piano_?" I asked, hopefully.

"No, of course not," said Holmes, frowning. "It is a violin."

"No, no," I said. "I meant, is it a quiet passage of music?"

Holmes considered. He squinted at his music score, dotted with ink and lined with pencil. "Possibly not," he said, seemingly unsure. "Let me play it for you, and then you can tell me."

My army life had prepared me for the onset of loud explosions and alarms and for the need of bravery in testing circumstances. It had not, however, prepared me well enough for Holmes and his new composition-in-progress for solo violin. There were twelve new bars, each one of them considerably shriller than the last. When with a dramatic flourish Holmes came to the end and relaxed his violin, he looked eagerly across to where I sat.

"Well?" he asked.

"Well," I said. My ears were ringing, yet still I did my best to find sufficient metaphor to please my friend. "I thought it reminiscent in tone of a field of angry crows setting about a farmer's freshly planted crops," I said, with mad invention.

Holmes looked put-out.

"Watson, we are _not_ tasting wine," said he, "therefore I do not require flowery hyperbole. Anyway," he added, "that is not what it is supposed to be at all. Those bars were the romantic interlude of the piece."

"You have to be joking," I said.

My friend raised his nose in the air, his lips set in a thin, displeased line.

"It expresses my feelings," he explained.

"Oh dear," I offered. "Are there very many more of them?"

"I am barely a fraction through the composition," Holmes replied. "The trouble with you, Watson, is that you do not appreciate good music. You have a tin ear, my dear fellow."

"I am sorry," I said, contrite. "I suppose that I do. What do you intend on doing with the piece once it is complete?"

"I intend on gifting it to Sarasate," said he, "that it might be performed at St. James's Hall."

"Goodness me," I said, my mind in a whirl. "That is very ambitious, Holmes."

"He should be pleased to have it," my friend replied. "And now, let us call down to Mrs. Hudson for a fresh pot of tea and some biscuits. Some of those nice little lemon ones that were baked only yesterday, what do you say?"

I felt that there was a great deal I might say, but none of it remotely connected with lemon biscuits. If Holmes was only a mere partway into his composition, then it might very well take a considerably longer while for it to reach its denouement. I tried to envisage Sarasate on stage at the Hall, playing the twelve bar cacophony that I had just witnessed, and found myself unable. It was not that my friend's musicianship was in question – for he was a remarkable violinist, and an intuitive interpreter of other's work. As far as I knew, however, this was his first endeavour as composer.

Holmes left the room to speak to our landlady upon the subject of refreshments. I took the opportunity to examine the score upon the music stand in greater detail. There were five sheets of paper, each one a perfect maelstrom of crotchets, semibreves and minims. Here and there my friend had scribbled various short aide memoirs for tone: _"quite cross"... "most agitated"... "exceedingly miffed"._

"I see you peeping, Watson."

I started back, guiltily. "You did not take long," I mumbled. "I was just having a little look."

"It is a work in progress," he replied, scooping up the sheets from the stand and thrusting them into his violin case. "Tomorrow I shall finish writing this current passage and then begin work on the Nocturne." He seemed reluctant to expound on the statement.

"Nocturnes are soothing, are they not?" I enquired.

"In this case it seems improbable," said he.

"Is it really your intention to compose a furious bedlam?" I asked, genuinely curious. "Or is it evolving thus... naturally?"

Holmes looked pained. "I think the latter," he replied. "I am not entirely sure why. It just appears to be so. My brain is full of..." He paused, tilted his head and half-closed his eyes as if in consideration.

"Ideas?" I suggested, helpfully. "Visions? Cadenzas?"

"No. Claptrap, Watson. My brain is full of claptrap."

"You once said that your brain was an attic, Holmes," I said, smiling sympathetically at my friend.

He grimaced. "Exactly. Perhaps what I am writing here will clear out a little of its superfluous content."

"Catharsis?"

"Mmmm, yes," said he. He looked at me sharply, then. "I am not a soul in torment, if that is what you are getting at. I wear coloured socks at the weekend. I sing in the bath. I would consider myself therefore to be a rather jovial fellow."

"I did not know about the socks," I said, wonderingly. "What colour?"

"That is irrelevant," he replied, pinkening. "Stay away from my sock drawer," he added.

"I would love it if you would write a soft Nocturne," I said.

Holmes looked at me.

"For contrast," I explained. "Seeing as how the other sections are so busy and dramatic. I do so enjoy the softer melodies and movements."

"I will see what I can do," said he.

The week that followed came as welcome respite, to my considerable surprise. Not that Holmes neglected his composition; for on the contrary, he applied himself with great alacrity and concentration. The scant snatches that I heard (for he had now locked himself away in his bedroom) seemed very different indeed to that which had gone before. A grand secrecy overcame him, and I, grateful for the peace and relative calm, did not make question of it.

One further week passed, until the Friday arrived and Holmes sat down next to me upon the sofa. He placed a tied bundle of papers into my lap.

"There," he said, "it is done."

"Holmes," I said, astonished. "I must congratulate you, my dear fellow."

"Would you like to hear it?" he asked, tentatively.

"Indeed I would," I replied, surprised, for my friend was uncommonly hesitant and shy about it now.

Holmes set up the music sheets upon his stand, tucked his Stradivarius beneath his chin, gently placed his bow upon the strings and began to play from the beginning.

The music was not as I had originally witnessed it. This now was beautiful, yearning, graceful music. Music with heart and harmony; delivered with feeling and vitality. Holmes played on, from one page to the next until the breath of the final few notes faded away into the small space between us.

"Holmes," I said, barely able to speak. "That was quite extraordinary. It was magnificent."

Holmes bowed his head. "I rewrote a great deal of it," he said, quietly, "in the hope that you might approve."

"And I do indeed," I replied, overwhelmed. "It is the loveliest piece of music that I have heard in a very long time."

"Thank you," he said, smiling gently.

"Sarasate will be fortunate indeed," I said, "to receive this into his repertoire."

Holmes shook his head slowly. "I have changed my mind on that front," he said. "I have decided that it should remain unpublished. I placed a little too much of... myself... into it, and it would no longer please me to hear another's interpretation, however accomplished."

"I understand," I said. "Might you play it once more for me?"

And he nodded and played, and the music swelled, and that small space, those few feet between us, became my world again for several precious minutes.


End file.
